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CREATING AGILE ORGANISATIONS I POWERING CHANGE 1

Creating Agile OrganisationsCharting dynamic operational and cultural models for today’s agile organisations

Authored by John Blackwell, Quora Consulting


Contents

Executive Summary 3

Addressing strategic agility challenges 4

Now is the time to build agility 5

Action amid uncertainty 6

Agility starts with a component-based view 7

Designing a malleable enterprise structure and governance 9

Addressing variance 13

Forming flexible value networks 14

Shared context 14

Formal governance 14

Stronger relationships 15

Steering mechanisms 15

Equipping organisations for variable work 16

Roles not jobs 16

Resource management 16

Virtual teaming 17

Community connections 17

Creating a conducive culture 18

Technology must be outcome focused 20

Consider corporate IT 21

Transformation management 23

Where do you need to flex? 25

About our research 26

Table of Figures 27

About the author – John Blackwell 28

About Quora Consulting 28

About Condeco 29


What’s lost in today’s blaring economic news headlines is the way in which organisations, large and small, are making decisions about their workplaces during the current uncertain times.

More often than not, business leaders have only a partial understanding of their current and future workforce needs. This is especially so when organisations are faced with unforeseen disruptions.

In turbulent circumstances, they commonly lack the insights that enable them to optimise cost control, support high performing staff, and shift valued assets to other parts of the business to maintain fluent operation.

To this end, we analysed the responses of senior leaders from our 25,000 person global study to query their decision making process for increasing the agility and responsiveness of their organisations and our findings indicate that all executive functions need a consistent analytical reference points to make decisions and investments. Along with the necessary resources to transform their corporate vital signs into insights, workplace analytics enable business leaders to be fully engaged in the formulation of corporate agility strategies. The results are better fact-based decision-making capabilities aligned with the long-term business imperatives of their organisations.

Executive Summary

More often than not, business leaders have only a partial understanding of their current and future workforce needs.This is especially so when organisations are faced with unforeseen disruptions.


Addressing strategic agility challenges

Globalisation and its interconnected-ness has created greater potential for disruption, an “interlocking fragility” (described in detail in our “Meeting the Future of Work” report) is challenging organisations to make difficult decisions about how best to maximise the productivity and effectiveness of various assets.

Issues such as investment capital, workspace, infrastructure, technologies, and employee effectiveness must be scrutinised to maintain fluent operation when the disruptions occur. Unfortu-nately, many organisations have not invested in defining, capturing, and analysing workplace data to the extent necessary to make clinical decisions.

Far too many business support functions have standard performance indicators that enable organisations to adjust their operations to business fluctuations but these metrics are not adequate for the unforeseen.

As a result, organisations are finding themselves with a lack of insight around a number of areas that must be addressed to maintain operations in a disrupted environment, including:

• Defining the requisite knowledge, skills, and capability requirements needed for the execution of business strategy. Organisations must have a firm understanding of what skills and capabilities they have in-house, and where gaps exist, identify the best way to fill them through mobility or additional resources

• Evaluating workforce performance. In turbulent times, organisations need to identify and reward high performers to mentor others and close performance gaps

• Understanding collaboration and knowledge sharing. More than ever, organisations must ensure that critical knowledge remains visible as conventional communications are disrupted

An agile business is an organisation whose business processes – integrated end-to-end across the company and with key partners, suppliers, and customers – can respond with flexibility and speed to any customer demand, market opportunity, or external threat.


Creating agile organisations involves taking decisive actions designed to pre-empt scarcity, while rebalancing productivity, effectiveness and cost controls, all while seeking targeted and innovative approaches to the workplace.

Action amid uncertainty

Today’s business environment is typified by increasingly complex and uncertain, with organisations facing increased global interconnectedness.

Global interconnectedness – and its integration of economies, societies, and cultures – has made the world smaller and, at the same time, more compli-cated. As globalisation opened up new avenues of trade and fostered growth,

it also created a more interconnected economic environment. And with has brought greater potential for disruption, an “interlocking fragility”.

To compete in this type of environ-ment, organisations must be capable of dynamically responding to a variety of business demands – with a response that predominantly involves transform-ing business practices.

It is an often-stated fact that, the speed with which an organisation can accom-plish change depends on the inherent agility of the organisation, its people, and how these people have learned to balance discipline and responsibility. In agility, organisations find their unique rhythm, a rhythm that cannot be repli-cated by rivals and offering a source of sustainable competitive advantage.

Now is the time to build agility


Greater agility allows a company to: • Be first to identify an opportunity –

and the first to exploit it• Respond rapidly to a new

proposition by reconfiguring external relationships

• Decrease idle resources, and thereby reduce costs

This type of adaptability does not happen by chance; it must be ‘designed in’. As organisations increase their responsiveness, it is important to establish pivotal points of flexibility throughout the business.

From organisational structure ... to external relationships ... to resource management ... to corporate culture, all facets must centre on making the business more agile.

While many organisations have become somewhat agile in specific areas, flexibility must become pervasive; it must be the primary design point of every aspect of how an organisation operates – commencing with its strategic business model, then pervading all aspects of its structure and governance, value network, work practices and corporate culture (see figure 1).

Component-based business model

Malleableenterprise

structure andgovernance

Flexiblevalue

networks

Variablework

practices

Conduciveculture

Enablingtechnologies

Figure 1 – Holistically addressing workplace elements to enhance effectiveness


Because of the central role a company’s business model plays, its design dictates the degree of flexibility a business has. By driving the compo-sition of the business model to a far greater granular level, based on distinct business components, it becomes easier to adapt and reconfigure the business design as conditions change.

A component-based business model consists of a ‘federation of business components’ that collaborate to create shareholder value.

Although highly autonomous, the ‘anchored freedom’ of these business components means they work together to create value for the enterprise as a whole.

Each business component is composed of a group of cohesive business activities that serve a unique purpose along with all of the resources (people, processes, knowledge, technologies, and assets) needed to accomplish that purpose.

Components are independent, in terms of management and financial viability, and yet interdependent, linked together through common business processes, information systems and service agreements.

Agility starts with a component-based view


In contrast, organisations operating with a traditional business model sometimes have difficulty determining and optimising the value contribution of a particular function because they measure and manage in aggregate.

Unlike the closed systems and rigid operating models inherent in traditional business designs, agile organisations that employ a component-based business model can rapidly reconfigure to address opportunities or threats, adding or removing components as necessary.

Since similar processes, skills, technologies, and even workstyles are grouped together, they can be swiftly adapted. Moreover, segregating activities and formalising the connections among components allows the business to source components internally or externally, based on which alternative offers the enterprise greater value.

More often than not, business leaders have only a partial understanding of their current and future workforce needs. This is especially so when organisations are faced with unforeseen disruptions.

Managementculture

Businessprocess

Workspaceutilisation

ExistingEmerging

Technologies

ConnectionsRelationsContext

RewardIncentive

Performance


As organisations increase the agility of their operations by establishing component-based business models, it’s critical to consider core competen-cies – those capabilities that matter most to the business success.

Core competencies:

• Provide potential access to a wide variety of markets,

• Make a significant contribution to the customer value proposition of the end product or service,

• Should be difficult, if not impossible for competitors to imitate

Breaking up the business into components allows agile organisations to focus more intently on those specific components related to their core competencies – and turn over those components deemed as non-core to best-in-class specialists that can add value in those areas of the business.

The shared services that many organisations have already established to exploit scale or expertise are progressing in the right direction; these services may evolve into internally maintained business components – or could become the starting point for an outsourced component.

Just as they have done in the ICT arena with applications and standardised interfaces, agile organisations use component-based business models to gain plug-and-play business flexibility – snapping in new components and pulling out others.

Designing a malleable enterprise structure and governance

Best-in-class specialists are external partners that provide market-leading capabilities for a specific business component through superior scale and knowledge.


Malleableenterprise


Flexiblevalue

networks

Variablework

practices

Conduciveculture



Simple vendor

Bilateral:narrow scopeof service

Specialist providestransactionservices

Generate somecost savings

Unilateral,customer led

Customer led, but mutualagreement

Collaborative Joint and shared

Joint, but dominated by oneenterprise

Obtainingsignificant cost savings and sharedoperating risk

Create new streamsof revenue

Create new focused entity with separatereturn

Leverage community for information,people and product/services

Full outsourcingto a specialist

Collaborationvia a new venture

Creation of newindependent entitythat controls assets,people andtechnology

One company (generally the largeror better performing one) dominates decision-makingwhile other partners accepts limited role

Bilateral:flexible, tailoredservice

Bilateral:intergratdproduct/services

Multilateral:new companyo�eringproduct/services

Multilateral:community

Relationship

Description

Benefit

Decision Process

Full outsourcing Integrated Independent entity Hub and spoke

Because they have more opportunities for leveraging external expertise, agile organisations will need the ability to participate in multiple types of partner-ships (both bilateral and multilateral), engage in increasingly sophisticated collaboration arrangements, and even relate to the same business partner in multiple ways.

Due to the inherent differences in collaboration arrangements, each type of relationship will require different forms of governance and organisational agility to manage them all simultane-ously (see figure 2).

For organisations that have traditionally relied on simple vendor relationships, new capabilities are needed. Internal organisations need to be realigned to relate differently to their partners. For instance, organisations may need to designate executive sponsors to serve as single points of contact for particular partners.

Where collaboration is prevalent, a centralised alliance management team can help ensure that the right relationships are established, the start-up process is streamlined – and the health of the collaboration is monitored on an ongoing basis.

Figure 2 - Agile businesses have a variety of collaboration types at their disposal


As organisations attempt to optimisethose business components kept inhouse, they will likely find thatdifferent business components workbest under different organisationalmodels (see figure 3).

The model selected for a particularbusiness component depends on itsprimary activities as well as its keybusiness drivers. For example, if a component is characterised by intense pressure to reduce cycle time and requires detailed monitoring and control, a process oriented organisational model may be most effective.

If the component’s primary workinvolved projects supported bymultidisciplinary teams that need tohone skills and share knowledgewithin their own individualdisciplines, a matrix model might be more suitable.

Organisations will no longer be able to rely on a universal businessstructure that is easily aligned top to bottom throughout the enterprise.Agile organisations must be far more adaptable, managing their business as a network of diverse organisational models.


FunctionalExpertise

A

FunctionalFunctionalExpertise

B

FunctionalExpertise

C

FunctionalExpertise

D

If business drivers require:• Specialist skills• Specialist functions serving multiple customers

Team basedIf business drivers require:• Highly integrated work• Work that can be grounded around definitive outcomes• Focused effort to produce a collective outcome

A

B

C

D

ProcessIf business drivers require:• Short cycle times• Close controlA B C D

ProductIf business drivers require:• Rapid product development• Diverse, complex products

Product Group 1 Product Group 2

A

B

C

D

A

B

C

D

A

B

C

D

Product Group 3

Functional expertise

Geography, market or customerIf business drivers require:• Sensitivity to local requirements• Rapid response to local needs/opportunities

Geography 1 Geography 2

A

B

C

D

A

B

C

D

A

B

C

D

Geography 3

Functional expertise

MatrixIf business drivers require:• Substantial project work• Mobilisation of multi skilled teams while maintaining functional expertise

Note: A matrix could be applied to any combination of functional,customer, geography, market or productFunction 1 Function 2 Function 3

Customer A

Customer B

Customer C

Figure 3 - Choice of organisational model should be based on business component needs


Addressing variance

To deal with this type of variance, organisational mechanisms like corporate governance have to be more sophisticated – however, crucially, businesses need to nurture people that are capable of working with such complexity.

With distinct business components sitting both inside and outside the enterprise, each with its own purpose, goals, organisational model, and metrics, keeping the business operating as a cohesive whole takes effort and investment – a strong corporate centre that unifies and integrates the various business components (see figure 4).

Unlike a ‘head office’ that serves simply as a point of centralisation, corporate centres add value to the operation of the organisation as a whole.

They provide oversight functions in areas such as corporate identity, regulatory compliance, and investment, as well as integration functions, like partner management, consolidated

procurement, or common ICT environments, that support or facilitate collaboration among business components – both internal and external, across the entire value network.

As enterprises organise in increasingly agile constructs, even the agenda of corporate boards change.

Although they have always dealt with both fiduciary obligations and strategic management issues, boards of agile organisations will need to be more actively involved in determining the most appropriate business model, forcing a periodic re-evaluation of which business components to focus on, and helping solidify required alliances and partnerships.

Figure 4 – The corporate centre unifies and integrates business components

Operations layer functions

• Enterprise business components• Partner and community

business components

Intergration layer functions

• Enterprise, partner and community management

Oversight layer functions

• Planning and identity• Finance and reporting• Legal and compliance• Investment and capital

CorporateCentre

Operations layer

Intergration layer

Oversight layer


Because of their scale and deep expertise, best-in-class specialists can often provide organisations with;

A more cost-effective alternative for a specialised business componentVariable pricing and supply to support fluctuating demand Improved business continuity, through greater redundancy, better privacy and security safeguards and a faster ramp-up for new capabilities

With tighter integration among strategic partners, agile organisations will be able to build more flexible and extensible value networks. However, as these networks become more complex and interdependent, they will require additional organisational support to perform at optimal levels.

Shared context If each entity in the network works only within the context of its own mission, strategies and management processes, conflict will be a constant and cooper-ation an accident. Agile organisations need to develop a shared context among the participants in their value

networks – a joint identity, direction, and way of working together. This shared definition of value network operations could outline, for example, management and business planning processes, operational business processes, the technology required, and the people involved.

Formal governance Formalised agreements between participants help ensure a mutual understanding of expectations and requirements, and keep everyone focused on what is important to the network’s customers. These agree-ments typically address aspects such as the specific product or service to be delivered, associated charges, and how to measure achievements. Furthermore, these governance agreements should be re-examined and adjusted on a regular basis to maintain effectiveness. As an example, for transactional type relationships, parties should agree on performance measures for expected service quantities, system availability, and cost reductions.

Forming flexible value networks

With tighter integration among strategic partners, agile organisations will be able to build more flexible and extensible value networks. However, as these networks become more complex and interdependent, they will require additional organisational support to perform at optimal levels


Malleableenterprise


Flexiblevalue

networks

Variablework

practices

Conduciveculture



Stronger relationships

Beyond formal agreements, agile organisations must foster a value network environment that is conducive to enduring partnerships.

To encourage collaboration and trust, relationships must be strengthened through both long-term and day-to-day actions – for example, establishing mutually beneficial financial arrangements between partners and fostering regular inter-company (and even intra-company) interaction at social functions.

Steering mechanisms

Particularly in multilateral relationships, formal steering mechanisms are necessary to guide participants and help resolve issues. Ideally, these mechanisms should consist of a set of councils and committees that keep the network connected at each level – strategic, tactical, and operational.

Steering mechanisms could include, for example, a content management group, a product management group, or an ICT management council.

The key is to keep the entire network operating on common ground through activities such as establishing a network-wide approach for serving the customer and maintaining equitable risk-reward arrangements for all participants.

Figure 5 – To encourage collaboration and trust, relationships must be strengthened through both long-term and day-to-day actions


The historical management concept of a supervisor managing a fixed group of employees to accomplish a stable set of activities is well suited for driving efficiency in a known environment, but it will not work as well in today’s unpredictable, dynamic business climate. For an enterprise to be agile and responsive to today’s butter-fly customers, it must have flexible mechanisms for accomplishing ‘work’ that change frequently in terms of type, volume, duration, and skill set required.

Roles not jobs

Rather than a fixed job description that outlines specific tasks to be performed and how they should be accomplished, employees in agile organisations are more likely to play positions comprised of multiple, variegated roles that change in number and scope, as business needs change.

For instance, instead of performing the job of ‘customer service manager’, an employee might accept the position of customer leader, initially tackling the roles of customer ‘X’s champion,

specialist on a particular product and member of a cross-selling committee.Over time, the customer leader completes some roles and commences others such as trainer or focus group leader. These agile role descriptions come with a set of defined responsibil-ities, but ultimately leave the decision with the employee on how best to accomplish the work.

Resource management

In an environment where opportunities appear (and vanish) quickly, it is crucial to be able to rapidly deploy resources – both capacity and capability – where they are needed.

A resource management function can serve as a clearing-house, matching qualified staff with new roles, based on employee availability, workstyles, and timeframes required by the role. With this type of model, line managers share their authority over staff with the resource management function to gain greater overall agility.

Equipping organisations for variable work

Communities of practice are cross-enterprise networks of subject matter experts focused on the design and implementation of leading-edge methods and solutions


Malleableenterprise


Flexiblevalue

networks

Variablework

practices

Conduciveculture



Virtual teaming

Although virtual teaming is not a new concept and is already used extensively in project-based organisations, it is becoming far more common phenome-non in a agile organisation. Rather than relying primarily on fixed departmental structures, a agile organisation creates teams on an ad hoc, as-needed basis, and then disbands them as soon as the task or project is complete.

Teams coalesce around a specific customer issue or opportunity and consist of a mix of roles from different business components (both inside and outside the organisation) and various geographies. Within teams, members interact based on their role – not by organisational hierarchy, rank, or protocol.

Community connections

With pockets of expertise scattered among business components, organisations will need a method for exchanging knowledge and building deeper capabilities in particular subject areas. Communities of practice1 can provide those connections.

Even though they can originate on their own, agile organisations may elect to establish a structured, highly facilitated community to stimulate leading-edge thinking on a particular topic or encourage dissemination of best practices. Whether face-to-face, virtual or both, community interaction must be regular to keep members engaged. And although these groups tend to be self-managed, they do depend on a certain amount of organisational support – such as collaboration tools.

1 Blackwell, John, “Liberating Human Performance: Communities of Practice”, Kogan Page 2009


To sense and respond rapidly to opportunities, threats and weak signals, organisations need a nurturing environ-ment where employees feel empowered to act. However, neglecting business fundamentals can cause firms to falter or fail to deliver on commitments.

Agile corporate cultures must balance both – in everything they do. For instance, they have best-in-class processes that are carefully managed in terms of costs and quality to deliver on commitments – but, at the same time, their employees assume owner-ship of these processes, working in a self-directed fashion, taking risks and deviating from the norm when necessary to sense and respond to changes.

In a agile business environment, a strong culture of collaboration among and within business components will also be critical. However, instilling a collaborative nature into the corporate culture takes time. The transforma-

tion starts with overt and purposeful actions that accelerate acceptance of this cultural attribute and eventually ends when collaboration becomes an automatic reflex.

Making this transition involves changing organisational artefacts, behaviours, values, and assumptions (see figure 6). For example, organisations may need to establish a reward system (artefact) that promotes cooperation and teamwork (behaviour) until sharing becomes a norm (value) and everyone truly believes that collaboration is less risky, always rewarded and beneficial to the individual and the company (assumption).

Since change is the norm with agile organisations, transformation manage-ment must become a core competence. To build this expertise, organisations need a repeatable method for driving change full circle, from vision, to plan, to implementation, to enhancement.

Creating a conducive culture

To sense and respond rapidly to opportunities, threats and weak signals, organisations need a nurturing environment where employees feel empowered to act.


Malleableenterprise


Flexiblevalue

networks

Variablework

practices

Conduciveculture



Figure 6 – Collaboration needs the support of all cultural elements to succeed

ArtefactsCreated objects, visible strutures

and products. Reinforce behaviours,values, assumptions.

Collaboration specific

• Communications network• Roles and responsibilities• Tools• Skills taxonomy

• Measures• Rewards• Methodologies• Learning programmes

BehavioursTo act, function, or react in a

particular way. Driven by assumptionsand values, reinforced by artefacts.

• Creative/innovative• Seeks best solution (for customer)• Accepts shared accountability• Manages/seeks diverse perspectives• Communicates effectively

• Decisive (acts/reacts with speed)• Acts in a trustworthy manner/trust others• Co-operates/teams• Acknowledges collaborative behaviour

Values/normsEnduring beliefs in specific conduct.

Driven by assumptions, manifested bybehaviours, reinforced by artefacts.

• Customer focuse• Creativity/innovation• Problem solving• Performance Improvement• Diverse perspectives• Co-operation

• Sharing (openess)• Balance competing values (dynamic tension)• Trust/respect/integrity• Timeliness• Flexibility

Basic assumptionsUnconscious, taken for granted beliefs,

perceptions, thoughts and feelings. Drive values and behaviours; can be

reinforced by artefacts.

• Better solution through collaboration than alone• Skills identifiable, available, effectively utilised, potentially from various sources• Risk in not collaborating

• Will be acknowledged and rewarded• Rewards outweigh risk• Diverse percpectives can be reconciled


Total Cost of Ownership, Business Alignment, Architecture, Value. Is this talking about workspace or technology? Are these terms from the Real Estate & Facilities support function or the Corporate IT support function? Perhaps they are actually from Human Resources business support function?

As we look at the journeys that work place (property) and people/culture (HR) have been on over the past decade, we find they have followed the same evolution as technology.

First, a new service or capability is introduced that supports new ways of doing business. It may even bring first-mover or competitive advantage as relative advantage cannot come from capabilities everybody has but rather from things that are unusual or scarce, different or innovative.

Others imitate and the exponential growth slows, it becomes business as usual.

The soap box fallacy takes over – on the first day of a two day parade,

a child brought a soap box and stood on it – and saw better than the other parade-goers.

On the second day of the parade, everyone brings something to stand on and no one can see any better than on the first day.

So was the soap box really worth the investment? Cost control and measure-ment is applied and the service falters and becomes inward looking, no longer helping shape the business, but holding it back. After a while, its very relevance is questioned and the search for “business alignment” and value begins.In his seminal 1985 book2, Michael Porter described support activities – infrastructure, HR management, technology, and procurement – as the primary activities that create margin.

To increase margin, we need these support activities to be business aligned, value-driven and outcome focused.

Technology must be outcome focused

“To increase margin, we need support (HR management/ infrastructure/ technology/ procurement) activities to be business aligned, value-driven and outcome focused”.– Michael Porter

2 Competitive Advantage: Creating and Sustaining Superior Performance. New York.: Simon and Schuster


Malleableenterprise


Flexiblevalue

networks

Variablework

practices

Conduciveculture



We are now at a nexus as people, technology, and property activities have all arrived at the same conclusion; how to show that they support the business and add value?

Rather than search for individuality, it may be time to redraw Michael Porter’s value chain model to coordinate and integrate these activities within the core value chains. People, technology and work space are now central to the organisation, and are no longer mere supporting functions but represent the potential for the core differentiation in the products and services the organisa-tion provides.

Consider corporate IT

The origins of corporate IT lay in sched-uling and inventory control, optimising and reducing errors as the amount of information grew beyond the bounds of human access and comprehension.

Decades of process automation and data-entry have been followed by networking and the personal computer. The internet now joins well over two billion computers, laptops, and tablets,

probably four billion smartphones and another eight billion ‘devices’.

Organisations have come to view IT as an ever more critical resource to their success, a fact clearly reflected in their soaring spending habits. As the power of corporate IT and the technology vendors has expanded, corporate IT, the department charged with designing, installing and operating all of this computing power has literally taken over the ‘work’ of the organisation. Budgets spiral, supposedly to provide first mover advantage, risk mitigation, cost avoidance & containment, innovation, revenue growth, and to meet legal requirements. This is how we arrived at today’s bloated, bureaucratic IT operations.

Research by the Corporate Executive Board3 projects that 75% of IT spend in 2015 will be controlled directly by the business and not part of a separate IT budget. Given that organisations now appear to have lost patience with their IT operations perhaps there’s no longer any need for a separate function?

PersonalAdministration

HumanResources

TalentManagement

PeopleOutcomes?

Mainframesand terminals

The PC, GUI,TCO

Does IT matter?Search for value

The user revoltBYOD, Cloud

Technologyoutcomes?

Property,housekeeping,

services

Commercial RE,lease and

cost control

Enterpriseasset management

Flexible work stylesand work spaces

Propertyoutcomes?

With 75% of IT spend in 2015 being controlled directly by the business rather than a separate IT budget, this shows that organisations have lost patience with their IT operation. Perhaps there’s no longer any need for a separate function?

Figure 7 - an outline of the journey that people, technology, and property have been on


Technology needs to be part of a more flexible model directly supporting business partners. Since we have cloud services instead of corporate infrastructure and consumer devices instead of ancient desktops, we need people focused on what and why rather than how and when. We need technical people to have collaborative and analytical skills, who understand the outcomes and can work in business driven, cross-functional teams.

The Corporate Executive Board finds that as high as 90% of existing IT staff do not possess such skills!

Organisations are also questioning the role of corporate property managers and coming to the same realisation. Space adjacency analysis, a decade of flexible working, and open-plan office space design has not materially improved business outcomes. Property costs, seen only as an overhead, accelerate the pressure to reduce costs and improve space utilisation. There is little alignment with business outcomes, only claims that a new workplace will increase collaboration, attract, and retain talent.

And finally human resources whose role has changed from simple administration to talent management.All three support activities claim to produce business value while missing

the central point – that technology, workspace and HR policy/culture must be coordinated for an holistic change approach.

No more ‘future workplaces’, ‘innovation labs’, enforced open-plan offices, copying ideas from competitors, culture change programmes or investing further in technology. It is time to use the data and information that is all around us and deeply understand not just the space, technology or culture but the very essence of the organisation – the new value chains that create margin and satisfy shareholders.

Between them, IT, HR and Property have enormous information which when shared can provide deep insight, not only looking back at utilisation and cost, but forwards for strategic planning of space, technology and talent.

Such an approach enables better decisions to be made faster. Given the pace of change in every direction, we need new insight instead of ‘past experience’, ‘best guess’, or ‘perceived wisdom’. Create a dynamic operational and cultural model that supports the work and business-component needs with analytic decisions based on the biggest possible picture across all of the support services.

Organisations are also questioning the role of corporate property managers and coming to the same realisation.Space adjacency analysis, a decade of flexible working, and open-plan office space design has not materially improved business outcomes.


Within a agile culture, all of the fundamental elements of transforma-tion management still apply; the key differences are greater complexity, more internal and external players, a larger number of variables and the speed and fluidity with which change must be implemented. In a agile environment, change cannot be left to chance; it must be managed systematically, as a formal programme.

An important part of the transformation management equation is leadership. Agile organisations recognise that leadership does not simply exist at the ‘top’; it resides throughout the organisation and its value network.

In fact, agility requires that leaders emerge in response to particular situa-tions. Within a agile culture, the concept of ‘leader’ is not attached to a position.

A leader on one team may play the role of member on another team, where a different member plays the leadership role.

Agile leaders, wherever they emerge, embody a range of special skills, capabilities, and personal qualities that help them succeed in global, virtual, and mobile workplaces.

Specifically, they:

• Thrive on challenges and remain focused on the future vision

• Can articulate a strong case for change, reducing resistance and creating energy and enthusiasm among participants

• Value relationships and work to maintain trust, creating a sense of cooperation and involvement to build and sustain momentum

• Expect to take calculated risks and reward innovation

To become a pervasive part of the corporate culture, leadership capa-bilities cannot stop with a few select individuals. Agile organisations should actively nurture future change leaders.

Activities and roles designed to offer personal leadership develop -ment can help firms attract high-potential candidates.

Once identified, organisations need to manage this pipeline, grooming today’s incremental change managers into tomorrow’s transformation leaders.

Transformation Management

Teams at work are beginning to resemble movie productions - independent individuals with unique talents getting together to work on a project.

At the end, they all go their separate ways - they may work together again in the future - they might not.


Unconventional culture yields extraordinary results at W.L. Gore

With annual revenues of US$1.2 billion and 10,000 employees, W.L. Gore & Associates ranks 199 on Fortune’s list of largest privately held companies. However, W.L. Gore’s corporate culture is quite different from most companies on that list – and from large public companies as well.

From its inception, the firm was built to innovate. And innovate it has, with products that span diverse business segments such as: electronic, medical, waterproofing fabrics (including its popular Gore-Tex product), fibres, industrial filtration, industrial seals, coatings, and micro-filtration.

Creativity and innovation are nurtured through a team-oriented atmosphere. With an obvious absence of status-oriented divisions (no executive dining rooms or plush corner offices, for example), everyone feels equally important and equally responsible. Each employee has the same title, Associate, and is compensated in the same manner – on his or her contribution to the company’s results.

To foster a more intimate environment where it’s possible for everyone to know and easily communicate with each other, the company splits any operating division that becomes larger than 200 associates. Ethical business practices and trust among associates are encouraged by asking associates to follow four guiding principles related to fairness, freedom, commitment, and discretion.

This culture is supported by a ‘lattice’ organisational structure instead of conventional hierarchy. This structure allows leaders to emerge instead of assigning managers. In this environment, leadership is determined by ‘followership’; there are no bosses, only sponsors, who help employees get started with a new job or assignment, recognised for their work and paid fairly.

With its emphasis on entrepreneurship and individual growth and development, W.L. Gore tends to attract people who operate well in an unstructured environment, a characteristic that is prevalent among natural innovators, which helps further its chief corporate goal.


Organisations that are intent on becoming agile businesses will likely need to limber up their organisations, both structurally and culturally. They will need to trade rigid approaches for more flexible alternatives: a component-based business model, malleable enterprise structure and governance, flexible value networks, variable work practices and a conducive culture.

Here are some questions to help you pinpoint areas that may not be as agile as you need them to be.

Does your organisation:

• Respond well to the need for speed, agility, and flexibility?

• Focus on its core competencies to derive competitive advantage?

• Have an effective mechanism in place to anticipate and respond to opportunities?

• Recognise the importance of leveraging business partnerships in areas that are not your core competence?

• Have organisational arrangements, from structure to decision-making processes that support or hinder success?

• Fully engage in a partnership approach to the market, from your board of directors to your front-line staff?

• Take a leadership role in your value network of partnerships?

• Not tolerate underutilised resources?

• Balance rigour/ discipline with empowerment/ risk-taking in each of your principal business units and functions?

• Effectively develop leaders and lead-ership throughout the organisation?

• Have a corporate culture that supports a collaborative approach to management – inside and outside the organisation?

• Manage change effectively and systematically … or is it left to chance?

Shedding the encumbrances of rigid organisational structures and staid corporate cultures enables organisations to sense and respond quicker to the business environment that surrounds them. Nevertheless, organisational and cultural agility don’t just happen. They are the result of a carefully executed strategy for organisational change.

Where do you need to flex?


To understand that challenges and opportunities associated with use of workplace analytics, we used the data from our circa 25,000 person survey across 19 countries and extracted the responses of 2,800 business executives and managers. The respondents spanned virtually all industries from public and private sectors, and covered a wide range of organisational size.

In addition to these survey results, we also interviewed academic experts and subject matter experts from a number of disciplines to understand the

practical issues facing organisations today. Their insights contributed to a rich-er understanding of the challenges, and the development of recommendations that respond to strategic and tactical questions that senior executives address as they operation-alise workplace analytics within their organisations. We also drew upon a large number of our case studies to further illustrate how organisations are leveraging workplace analytics and illuminate how our recommenda-tions are being applied different organisational settings.

About our research

Figure 8 – sample of 2,800 respondents and contributors from circa 19 countries

Europe 37% North America 29%

Middle East and Africa 8%

Asia Pacific 14%

India 7%Latin America 5%


Figure 1 Holistically addressing workplace elements to enhance effectiveness

Figure 2 Agile businesses have a variety of collaboration types at their disposal

Figure 3Choice of organisational model should be based on business component needs

Figure 4 The corporate centre unifies and integrates business components

Figure 5To encourage collaboration and trust, relationships must be strengthened through both long-term and day-to-day actions

Figure 6Collaboration needs the support of all cultural elements to succeed

Figure 7 An outline of the journey that people, technology, and property have been on

Figure 8Sample of 2,800 respondents and contributors from circa 19 countries

Table of Figures


John is widely recognised as the world’s foremost thought-leader on the changing nature of work and effective business operation. Drawing on a 35-year board-level career with IBM and MCI, John implicitly understands that opportunities for innovation and investment must continually balance the need to act quickly. John’s a prolific author with more than 80 titles to his name, including;

• A Mandate for Change• Managing Uncertainty• The Workplace of the Future• Challenging Perceived Wisdom• Smartworking• Unleashing Creativity,

Flexibility, & Speed

These and many more of John’s reports can be downloaded from his online library.

A Fellow of the Chartered Management Institute and a visiting fellow at three prestige universities, to-date John and his colleagues at Quora has inspired more than 350 organisations to innovate new work practices.

Working together, John and Quora provide answers to problems that stifle change, dismantle barriers and overcome corporate inertia to create effective new work practices.

Quora is a unique business consultancy and provider of strategic solutions whose forte is inspiring business leaders to transform workplaces and work practices through precision analytics and compelling methodologies.

Our analytics help organisations focus limited resources on critical decisions. We provide frontline leaders with Net Present Value clarity to ensure effective investment decisions for;- attracting and retaining talent; determining space configuration and location; deploying technology innovations; enhancing staff productivity; and making fluent social, ethical, and environmental decisions. Our newly released Workplace Excellence Platform has migrated our analytics, methodologies and metrics to a cloud-based platform. This offers organisations an unequalled opportunity to track change metrics &

KPI progress in real-time together with simulating workplace investments prior to deployment. We’ve also offer modules for automated space utilisation assessment and similar.

For the first time, organisations can fluently integrate internal and external data to predict future workplace behaviour, events and demands.

Contact details:Quora ConsultingHenley-on-ThamesOxfordshire RG9 5LXUnited Kingdom+44 1491 [email protected]

About the author – John Blackwell

About Quora Consulting


Powering Change

Condeco is the leading provider of integrated meeting room, desk booking and space utilisation technologies. Our robust software and exceptionally designed hardware is the most feature-rich and versatile on the market.

Condeco’s complementary product suite is designed to provide a seamless experience, with technology and insight informing one another to help you better

understand and improve your work-place. We are a full service company, uniquely positioned to provide clients with an end-to-end solution and offer 24/7 support across the globe. Our integrated departments encompass research, design, development, services and support.

Condeco powers your business to change the way you work and manage your real estate more effectively.

About Condeco

Contact

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Condeco has offices across America, EMEA and Asia Pacific as well as strategic partners across the world.

Who We Work With

Millions of people are using Condeco worldwide, including some of the largest organisations across the globe.

EMEA (UK)

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